GDPR ‘will support personalisation growth’

Written by Peter Walker

11/05/18

Almost two-thirds of consumers (62 per cent) say confidence about sharing data with businesses is improved by the incoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which governs the collection, storage and use of personal data.

The figure comes from a report commissioned jointly by one-to-one marketing industry body DMA and data marketing firm Acxiom, which surveyed a representative sample of over 1,000 UK adults.

The research found that the majority of people in the UK (57 per cent) prefer to receive some form of personalised marketing from companies. Most of whom (62 per cent) also understand the need for companies to access their data in order to help stop them receiving marketing that is not relevant to them.

Even among those shoppers that do not like marketing at all, 40 per cent were comfortable with sharing data to avoid irrelevant offers or recommendations.

The survey also found that consumers fall into five groups when it comes to their preference for personalised marketing:

• Personalisation fans (36 per cent): Favouring personalisation of offers and do not see the appeal of random offers.
• All the offers (21 per cent): Like personalised offers, but also want random offers that they might not be aware of, not wanting to ‘miss out’ on things outside of their filter bubble.
• Surprise me (10 per cent): Would rather see random offers than have them personalised, preferring to be surprised or discover offers for products and services.
• Indifference (15 per cent): Indifferent towards offers, they are neither positive nor negative towards either personalised or random offers.
• Resistant to marketing (18 per cent): Resistant to marketing in general and do not like receiving either personalised or random offers.

“At its heart, GDPR is about transparency and honesty in how organisations collect and use customers’ data - this is essential to building and maintaining trust between businesses and consumers,” said Rachel Aldighieri, managing director at the DMA.

“The new laws offer an opportunity for organisations to put the consumer front and centre of their company’s culture,” she continued, adding: “An essential part of that is talking to customers about their data and how the new laws benefit them in a way that they can understand.”

Recent research from Accenture showed that 70 per cent of people welcomed the new regulations, although worries about data security (68 per cent) and a lack of control over hidden data (62 per cent) were the two biggest concerns. Given more powers over how their personal data is collected and used, nearly half (47 per cent) said they would like some aspects of their digital history to be deleted forever.

Meanwhile, a study commissioned by Veritas and conducted by 3GEM found that 40 per cent of people surveyed are already planning to take advantage of their data privacy rights within six months of the 25 May implementation date – leading to many organisations potentially being inundated with requests for personal information.

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